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Women sleep half an hour longer than men, phone app data shows

Elliott Erwitt/Magnum

DID you sleep well? The answer may depend on your age, location, gender and exposure to light.

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Daniel Forger at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and his team looked at the sleep patterns of 5000 people worldwide. The team obtained their huge data set via Entrain, a smartphone sleep-tracking app. The data covered users’ bedtime, waking time, time zone and daytime light exposure.

The team found that middle-aged men sleep the least, while women under the age of 25 sleep the most. Women as a whole appear to sleep for 30 minutes longer on average than men, going to bed slightly earlier and waking up slightly later.

The time when people woke up was the factor most strongly linked to total sleep time, suggesting that a job requiring an early start every day can reduce sleep. Daylight exposure was linked with increased sleep – perhaps because outdoor jobs are more tiring.

Where people lived mattered too. People in Singapore, for example, sleep for an average of 7.5 hours a night, while Australians get 8.1 hours (Science Advances, doi.org/bgrp).

This article appeared in print under the headline “App gives low-down on global sleep”